Are You Secretly Giving in to Perfectionism?

Excellence and self forgetfulness might be a path out.

Juva, Finland

Perfection often gets in the way of excellence.

We work hard for the “perfect” Instagram, the “perfect” LinkedIn profile, the “perfect” vacation. Our current culture fools us to believe that “perfect” is possible all the time, in ways that wiser folks from thousands of years of civilizations knew differently. We believe others have mastered the art of perfect, and we need to catch up.

Don’t get me wrong. I have taken the bait over the years myself. I have had to work hard extracting myself. If you ever had the opportunity (or misfortune) to sit in on a leadership development session I led, chances are you heard this quote:

“The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.” - Anna Quindlen

I have shared this quote with hundreds of young leaders because it captured the journey I walked. It helped me understand who I needed to be in order to lead for 20 years (a topic I wrote about last week). If you desire to have a meaningful impact through long obedience in the same direction, it is critical to grapple with this quote’s implicit themes.

Leaders confront two distinct challenges when they step into leadership:

• What standard of excellence do I hold myself and the organization to as I work toward achieving the mission?

• What does that standard require of me personally and professionally?

These questions become more complicated when you layer in the realities of social sector leadership in several ways. Mediocre or good execution doesn’t move the needle when your work focuses on educational neglect, poverty, racism, and other negative systemic realities. Big social problems require excellent execution. Second, the stakes are high. Your work is often life changing and can have significant amplifying effects on people's lives–in positive or negative ways.

The nuance is here. When answering these two essential leadership questions, it is easy to confuse excellence with perfection.

I did.

Excellence matters–a lot. Excellence comes with a cost. It takes hard work, commitment and perseverance. And if we are honest, there is a very fine line between doing work to perfection and excellently that many of us struggle with. Getting this right can lead to making a long term impact. Getting it wrong can lead to burnout and push us out of leadership and the work.

As new leaders, we often put a lot of pressure on ourselves to get leadership right - pushing us into the trap of perfectionism.

When I became a first-time principal in Newark, New Jersey, I reflected on mistakes I had seen other school leaders make. I created a two-column list. First column: mistakes I would not make as a leader. Second column: things I didn’t want to ever happen in a school I was running. In short, I was creating a checklist to become the “perfect leader.”

That dream died quickly over the next 8 months. I got my first 360 evaluations from the entire school team in April. I remember reading them on a plane back from my brother’s wedding in Phoenix. One evaluation from one of our best teachers stood out. She said: “You tried hard this year, but you were not a very good leader. The team deserves better leadership from you.” She was right. I was not only far from perfect, I was bad. It was the best evaluation I ever got. I was deflated, but it started the process of helping me aim for excellence not perfection.

By the time I started DSST six years later, you’d think I would have learned my lesson. I was a better leader. And we got off to a great start–which was THE problem. The trap of perfectionism creeped right back into my leadership. It took 40% of the team leaving after year 3, and a massive student theft ring stealing from our teachers to realize that I should return to giving up on perfection.

To be clear, I still have a lot of perfection tendencies. Folks who have recently worked for me will tell you that. But over the last 20 years, I have started to understand and make peace with the difference between perfection and excellence–and how to become myself in the process. I am a better leader, and, as a result I am on the road to becoming my true self.

So how do we become ourselves in the process of moving from perfection to excellence? We can start by understanding the difference between the two. A few thoughts:

Perfection is often focused on self: Why we do something is often the difference between perfection and excellence. Perfection is more about your own ego and proving to yourself something. It often comes from a deficit mentality where our self worth is too dependent on our performance. I find perfection is rarely in service to others, but more about living an unrealistic vision of ourselves. I can easily slip into perfection mode. And when I do, I find I am inwardly focused on my goals. It is rooted in a desire to be “special,” to be the alpha leader, not to lead in service of others. The extra effort that I invest to be perfect can be redirected to doing excellent work in other areas of need.

Excellence is often focused on others: Excellence can also be about self and proving worthiness to yourself and others. But, more often, excellence is rooted in the service of others.

Excellence is doing something to the highest standard of execution. And, if you are focused on positive impact, by transitive property, excellence is in service of making a big difference in the lives of others. Being “perfect” can also serve a mission, but the additional effort to get to perfect from excellent is for you.

Excellence takes an unwavering commitment to mission and to deeply solving problems at the root, not surface, level. It is not about words or performative acts, but digging deep and showing up to do the hard work every day. An orientation to excellence can continually take the focus off self and onto the mission. It is a discipline that challenges you to stretch in your day-to-day work. And when you stretch for the right reason, your focus begins to crowd out perfection if you center on organization impact.

How to find your true self? When you exert maximum effort towards a hard problem, you learn a lot about yourself. Who are you? What do you care about? Do you have a “default operating system?” How much are you willing to sacrifice in service of others? When you hold excellence in service to others, you have the opportunity to start understanding your true self. Perfection is the unhealthy version of this process. It orients you to extremes, self-serving tendencies, and your ego as opposed to pointing you towards expressing your true self.

Why self forgetfulness matters: The final step of being excellent, not perfect is self-forgetfulness. It is thinking of yourself less and others more. Tim Keller, my pastor in New York City in my 20s and 30s, had a profound impact on my life He said this:

“The essence of gospel humility is not thinking more of myself or less of myself, but thinking of myself less.”

This is not easy in life or leadership. Being a leader demands making hard decisions, taking risks, and holding folks accountable. These actions push you back to self. To think of self less rests in an ability to build a daily routine of reflection and nourishing your soul so that you can focus the rest of the day on others. In this process, the cost of leadership on self becomes less important. The desire for and seductive pull of comfort, balance, and the easier path become a little bit less powerful.

Leaving perfection behind to become your true self is not easy. If you can focus on excellence, not perfection, you will find a path to a more sustainable and greater impact. You will find that thinking of yourself less and others more will jump start a new journey towards excellence and your true self.

Reflection of the Week: What is your relationship to perfection?